Kashmiri militants have adopted a new technique for eliminating residents they believe are working as informers for the security forces - lethal injections. On Sunday, a man and a woman died after being injected with poison, according to police.

The separate incidents happened in the remote border area of Poonch. The woman, Rani Begum, was kidnapped from her village and injected with a poisonous substance, while the man, Firoz Din, was injected at his house by four militants.

'This is the first time that they've done such a thing. We're now waiting for the postmortem report,' said Deputy Inspector General S. M. Sahai.

Confirmed or suspected informers have always lived dangerously. Militant groups do not think twice about shooting them and their entire families dead. The supply of informers who can help the security forces catch militants has dried up of late, according to police sources. They now depend mostly on electronic intelligence gathering.